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Not playing anything at the moment cuz I'm in camp, but I had been playing COD Infinite Warfare on Xbox One, which I think is absolutely awesome. So much fun. And before that I played the new Battlefield 1 for a bit, but I didn't like it much.

Downloading some mobile version Need For Speed game right now, so I got something to play in camp, lol, should have brought my Xbox.

I just finished Inside (the guys that made Limbo). Gameplay was good, storytelling without uttering a single word was genius but I thought the story sucked.

Spoiler

Basically the scientist that was thrown into the hive mind (the big blob of people at the end) takes control of the boy you are playing in an attempt to make his way to the hive mind and free them from it's prison but that beam of light you see at the end is not the sun, if you notice in a previous area, you can see that same beach front with the alleged sun if your looking out a window, you can see more of that area and it's just a huge spotlight. So apparently this is a repeating procedure and the intent was to lure the Hive mind there once it does escape as they knew it would.

It's basically about the illusion of freedom. There is a secret area in the corn field, a door that leads to the alternative (real) ending. Once you know the song, you can make your way to the control room and unplug the mind control experiment. The boy will go limp showing that he was being controlled but the goal here is basically putting an end to the repetition of the whole thing...kinda like in the Matrix 2 where Neo learns he's done it all before.

 

I have mostly been playing Overwatch and Skyrim Special Edition. I have Battlefield 1 and Titanfall 2 and a plethora of other new games, but I keep going back to the ones I love the most. Tonight I installed Lakka on my Raspberry Pi 3. Using a PS4 controller over BT and playing Final Fantasy XII for nostalgia.

  • 2 weeks later...

Took a ciesta from Skyrim since it essentially never ends to pickup "Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance".  It was listed on one of those Neowin weekly PC game sales and I snatched it up because I'm a fan of the Metal Gear series.

 

It's an interesting game, much less sneaking and much more slicing and dicing.  Maybe interesting for those who found crawling around on your belly and breaking necks and dragging bodies into dark corners and such boring.  You can still sneak though.  Many areas of enemies can be cleared without alerting anybody by hiding in boxes, tossing out 3-D holograms of naked chicks, etc. and sneaking up behind them.  However, the sneaking mechanics aren't nearly as fleshed out as other MG titles, probably to place an emphasis on the swordplay.  The game is fun to play, but the swordplay can sometimes feel a little over the top, like a cross between Metal Gear Solid and Kill Bill with quick time events on some of the major boss battles.  Here's some screenshots.

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For around the last year i've only really been playing Pokemon, or Trials Fusion / Mario Kart 8 if i've had some mates over for an evening.

 

This year I've finished Pokemon Y and Omega Ruby on the 3DS, then gone back and finished the second half of Heart Gold, White and Black 2 on the DS.

So I've now finished at least one game in every set of Pokemon games, currently i'm playing Pokemon Moon.

 

Prior to this year i've gamed almost exclusively on the Xbox since the 360 was released in 2005, however i've found it nice to play a game with a more long term goal, that been collecting all 802 Pokemon. At the moment i roughly have 600 of 802. Importing Pokemon from the GBA games right the way up to the 3DS is time consuming, however worthwhile been able to keep the Pokemon the younger me caught many years ago and use them in a modern game.

  • Like 1

Just finished Tyranny.

 

If you like Pillars of Eternity/Divinity Original Sin you will probably like this.

 

Good lore, good twists, interesting spell system, some good characters.

 

I rarely replay a game, can see myself replaying this one.

  • Like 3

Final Fantasy XIV (the MMO) finally patched so I've been playing it the past day or two during spare time; have actually spent quite a bit of time in Gold Saucer.  Started playing it on Playstation 4 several months back and then when one of the patches was released I wasn't able to download it.  Even bought the PC version when I got this laptop and still couldn't patch it.  It would get so far and give me an error.  Called Square and they said everything was fine on their end, and I got busy with the new house and never had time to chase it down.  Opened it up the other day just out of curiosity and it patched and works just fine.

 

Cool thing is that it's cross platform online, so you are playing online alongside people on PS4, PS3, PC, etc., all in the same world together, and so when I started playing on the PC, I had my character and stuff from where I had been playing on PS4, :-)

 

Here's a couple screenshots.  I've uploaded more at: http://steamcommunity.com/id/gerowen/screenshots/?appid=39210&sort=newestfirst&browsefilter=myfiles&view=grid

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Finally got DOOM. First game to really make my GTX 760 feel inadequate. Glory kills is such a simple yet effective gameplay idea, makes you wonder why it has never been done before. Nothing to do with Doom 3 except that there are demons in both. A lot less atmosphere and somehow the story feels even more insignificant, but the gameplay has improved ten-fold that's for sure.

 

Still mainly just playing Age of Empires 2 HD. Patch 4.8 feels much more fluid than ever before.

  • Like 2

I've got Titanfall 2, Dishonred 2, Battlefield 1, etc etc, but I can't seem to get into any of them. Just not in the mood. Been playing Pillars of Eternity and pissing time away on Spelunky. Guess I'm waiting for Civ6 to open up to Workshop mods.

been playing a load of ARMA3, Sniper Elite 2 & 3 and getting Sniper Elite 4 in February ( http://store.steampowered.com/app/312660/) Feb 14th 2017.. hmm Valentines day, sorry babe got a game tonight! :laugh:

 

finally Need for Speed undercover through Steam. I own 91 games on steam and about 20 more on Origin and Uplay combined 

On 12/5/2016 at 10:48 PM, Zagadka said:

I've got Titanfall 2, Dishonred 2, Battlefield 1, etc etc, but I can't seem to get into any of them. Just not in the mood. Been playing Pillars of Eternity and pissing time away on Spelunky. Guess I'm waiting for Civ6 to open up to Workshop mods.

 

how is Titanfall2? I haven't quite pulled the trigger on that one. is it a combo Call of duty ala' mechwarrior?

3 hours ago, LittleFroggy said:

how is Titanfall2? I haven't quite pulled the trigger on that one. is it a combo Call of duty ala' mechwarrior?

Not sure how that stacks up, but I found the single player campaign to be really quite great and MP solid as well.

Finally finished Metal Gear Rising.  I'm thinking about trying to buckle down and finish Metal Gear Solid V: Phantom Pain on PC, but in MGS games I'm used to having a relatively linear story line with optional items and things with the levels as you progress through the game.  MGSV is sort of quazi-open world and has tons of side missions, soldiers to recruit and all this other stuff.  On one hand it's cool to be able to just jump in and run around capturing outposts and doing side-ops, but on the other hand I've got over 10 hours of gameplay in and the main menu says I'm at 6% completion.  The amount of content seems a little overwhelming.  I may go ahead and FINALLY finish Dragon Age: Origins.

 

One thing I've noticed about MGSV.  It runs at 30-40 fps on the PC I'm using right now, textures set to high, but I have to crank the resolution down to 720p.  Still looks decent enough, but when I tried running it at 1080p this machine just fell to a crawl, lol.

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  • 2 weeks later...

My wife loves me, I had mentioned this game a month or so back and when it went on sale she snagged it for me.  It's an older one, but this is one of my favorite CoD games.  It has the newer, decent looking graphics of CoD 4, but it's still loosely based on the history of WW2, plus it's got Nazi Zombies!

 

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  • Like 1

I feel bad. Spoiled. I have plenty of great games, but I am supremely bored. I think something sounds fun, DL/install it, after 5 minutes get too bothered to continue. Nah to FPS, don't have the attention span for sims and strategy, RPGs seem dull, tired of side scrollers...

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    • AMD RX 9070 GRE AI, Blender benchmarks vs 9070 XT, 7800XT, Nvidia RTX 5070, 4070 by Sayan Sen Earlier this week, we shared the first part of our review of AMD's new RX 9070 GRE. It was about the gaming performance of the GPU, and we gave it an 8 out of 10. As a follow-up, similar to how we did with the 9070 XT and non-XT, we are doing a dedicated productivity review for the RX 9070 GRE as well, where we compare it against the 9070 XT, 9070, 7800 XT, as well as Nvidia's 5070 and 4070. This will include AI, rendering, compute, and more benchmarks. AI performance, especially, is a very important metric in today's world, and AMD also promised big improvements thanks to its underlying architectural improvements. We will be pitching it against the data we already have for the RX 9070, and RX 9070 XT, but also the Nvidia 5070 FE, MSI GeForce RTX 4070 VENTUS 2X 12G, and Gigabyte Radeon RX 7800 XT GAMING OC 16G as they are in a similar price class, but also because we do not have a comparable 5060 Ti card lying around here that we can compare it against. Before we get underway, this is a collaboration between Sayan Sen and Steven Parker, who lent me his test bed. Also, there was no editorial input from AMD. First up, the specs of the RX 9070, 9070 XT, and 9070 GRE, which were given to us by AMD: Radeon RX 9070 GRE Radeon RX 9070 Radeon RX 9070 XT Boost Clock: Game Clock: up to 2.79GHz up to 2.20GHz up to 2.52GHz up to 2.07GHz up to 2.97GHz up to 2.40GHz Stream Processors 3,072 (48 CU) 3,584 (56 CU) 4,096 (64 CU) Ray Accelerator 48 56 64 AI Accelerator 96 112 128 ROPs 96 128 Texture Mapping Units 192 224 256 Memory 12 GB GDDR6, 18Gbps Clock, 192-bit Bus 432 GB/s 16 GB GDDR6, 20Gbps Clock, 256-bit Bus Effective Memory Bandwidth: 640 GB/s Infinity Cache 48 MB (3rd Gen) 64 MB (3rd Gen) Card Bus PCI-E 5.0 X16 Output 2x HDMI 2.1b 2x DisplayPort 2.1a Power consumption 220W 304W Recommended PSU 650W 750W Slot width 2x 3x Price (SEP) $549 $599 As you can see from the specs above, it is less than the standard RX 9070 in every way that counts, except for slightly higher Boost and Game clock speed. Design Moving on, the RX 9070 GRE we were given is an XFX Swift triple-fan, dual-slot design with two 8-pin connectors. At 30cm (self-measured), it will fit in most systems easily. There is no RGB either. The AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE by XFX from all angles. Test system Our test system consists of the following: Lian Li O11 Dynamic Mini V2 Flow (Amazon|Newegg) ASUS Z890 ProArt Creator WiFi (Amazon|Newegg) Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus (Amazon|Newegg) Thermal Grizzly KryoSheet - 44x37 (Amazon|Newegg) 2x 16GB G.Skill Trident Z5 RGB (7200 MT/s in XMP) (Amazon|Newegg) Sabrent Rocket4 Plus 2TB SSD (Amazon) Windows 11 25H2 (Build 26200.8246) AMD shared a press driver based on the recently released Adrenaline 26.5.2 that we were required to use. We now move on to our benchmarks. First up, we have Geekbench AI running on ONNX. For some reason, the 9070 GRE does exceptionally well here in both half-precision (FP16) and single-precision (FP32). It manages to beat the RTX 5070 and RX 9070 non-XT, and is only behind the 9070 XT. Since Geekbench runs in short bursts instead of continuously hammering the graphics card, it seems the GRE's faster boost clocks are helping here. Next up, we move to the UL Procyon AI test suite, starting with the image generation benchmark. We chose the Stable Diffusion XL FP16 test since it is the most intense workload available on Procyon. The Nvidia cards do very well here, as even the 4070 out-muscles AMD's best fairy easily. The positive thing about the GRE is that it gets quite close to the 9070 non-XT in this test; this indicates that the VRAM does not play a very big role here, as SD XL relies on float16 (FP16). So this is something to keep in mind again. If you wish to work with float32 AI workloads, graphics cards with larger than 12 GB buffers would likely emerge as victors. Regardless, the gains are still massive on AMD's 9000 series compared to the 7000 series. Following image generation, we move to the text generation benchmark. This is one test where the 9070 GRE struggled, quite a lot. It seems that the 12 GB VRAM and lower memory bandwidth of the new Radeon 9070 GRE are hurting it quite a bit; the split is massive, especially in a test like Llama2, which packs 13 billion parameters. As such, in all the tests, the 9070 GRE is the slowest of the lot. Next, we tried Blender, and here the AMD GPUs were beaten by Nvidia. Rendering is something the Green team has always had a lead over the Red side, and it has not changed so far. On the positive side, though, the 9070 GRE shows significantly better results than the 7800 XT, which means AMD is on the right path. Catching up to Nvidia, though, will require a lot more effort. And we hope HIP and ROCm can keep improving. Wrapping up AI testing, we measured OpenCL throughput in the Geekbench compute benchmark. The RX 9070 GRE alongside the 9070 did not fare well here at all, even falling behind the 7800 XT. Interestingly, even the RTX 5070 could not beat the 4070 on OpenCL, so perhaps this suggests that OpenCL optimization may not have been a priority for either AMD or Nvidia in the modern era. Conclusion We reached the end of our productivity performance review of the 9070 GRE, and we have to say it's a mixed bag. Unlike the 9070 and 9070 XT, the GRE excels in some areas while losing ground fairly easily in others. Similar to how it happened in gaming, any time the card's memory subsystem gets hammered, it tends to fall behind the others. This was the case with text generation, wherein we saw the VRAM sometimes hit its maximum available 12 GB of usage with larger model sizes. So what do we make of the RX 9070 as a productivity hardware? It can certainly be used, but you have to know it has its limitations. For those looking for a GPU that can deal with more, AMD recently unveiled the Radeon AI PRO R9700, which is essentially a 32 GB refresh of the 9070 XT with some additional workstation-based optimizations. On a similar note, the new Ryzen AI Halo platform is something you can consider if you want to set up a local AI processing station. Considering everything, we rate AMD's Radeon RX 9070 GRE a 7.5 out of 10 for its productivity performance. Price is less of a factor for those looking at productivity cases compared to those considering the GPU for gaming, and as such, we felt it did quite decently on many occasions and can be handy if you need a 12 GB GPU and, for some reason, don't want to get Nvidia. Purchase links: RX 9070 / XT / GRE (Amazon US) As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.
    • Does anyone here know if these updates are integrated into the UUP dump isos?
    • Motrix Next 3.9.4 by Razvan Serea Motrix Next is a modern, open-source cross-platform download manager built as the official next-generation successor to the original Motrix project. It has been completely rewritten using Tauri 2, Vue 3, TypeScript, and Rust, while still relying on the powerful Aria2 download engine for high-speed multi-protocol transfers. The app supports HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, BitTorrent, ED2K and magnet links, offering advanced features like multi-connection acceleration, task scheduling, bandwidth control, and batch download management. With a significantly reduced install size (around 20MB), it focuses on being lightweight, fast, and resource-efficient compared to traditional Electron-based download tools. Designed for Windows, macOS, and Linux, Motrix Next delivers a clean, modern UI inspired by Material Design 3 principles, with smooth animations and a minimal workflow. It improves usability through better download organization, system tray integration, and enhanced torrent handling including selective file downloads and tracker management. Motrix Next features: Multi-protocol downloads — HTTP, FTP, BitTorrent, Magnet, .torrent, ED2K, and Metalink tasks BitTorrent — Selective file download, DHT, peer exchange, encryption controls, metadata caching, GeoIP peer flags, and tracker probing Browser extension integration — Embedded Extension API with independent authentication, download confirmation, smart auto-submit, filename hints, referer/cookie forwarding, and real-time controls (Chrome Web Store · Edge Add-ons) Safe filename handling — Content-Disposition, RFC 2047, non-UTF-8, percent-encoded, and extensionless URL resolution with path traversal sanitization Download organization — Favorite and recent folders, optional file-type categorization, stale-record cleanup, and completed history backed by SQLite Concurrent downloads — Independent controls for active tasks, HTTP connections per server, segments per file, and BT peer limits Speed control — Global and per-task upload/download limits with day-of-week and time-of-day scheduling System integration — Tray operation, optional tray speed display, macOS Dock badge/progress, protocol handlers for magnet://, thunder://, and motrixnext:// Lightweight mode — Destroys the WebView on minimize-to-tray while Rust keeps the engine, task monitor, notifications, history, and extension routing alive Notifications and power options — Native task start/complete/failure notifications, keep-awake during downloads, and optional shutdown after completion Network controls — Scoped proxy support for downloads, app updates, and tracker updates, plus system proxy detection Auto-update channels — Stable, Beta, and Latest Across Channels policies with separate download and install phases Diagnostics — Structured logs, exportable diagnostic ZIPs, database integrity checks, automatic DB rebuild, and Linux GPU rendering fallback Personalization — Light/dark/system theme, 10 color schemes, 26 languages, and first-launch system language detection Motrix Next 3.9.4 changelog: Motrix Next 3.9.4 promotes the 3.9.4 beta cycle to stable. This release refreshes bundled engine binaries, improves task detail readability and copy actions, expands link handling for magnet and ED2K workflows, polishes responsive navigation and text wrapping, updates browser extension documentation, and refines network preference controls. New Features Task Detail copy actions — Added copyable values for task metadata and reusable render functions for long text fields. Magnet and ED2K lifecycle support — Added task lifecycle handling for magnet and ED2K links. History cleanup for deleted tasks — Deleted tasks can now remove matching history records. User-Agent management — Added user-agent management and improved related network preference controls. Browser extension documentation — Added the Firefox Add-ons link for the Motrix Next extension. Improvements Engine binaries — Updated bundled binaries for supported architectures. Task Detail readability — Long task names, URLs, tracker values, and copyable metadata now render more clearly. Deletion messaging — Refined localized task deletion text for clarity and consistency. Text wrapping — Improved URI input wrapping and task name multiline display. Navigation layout — Improved sub-navigation responsiveness. Disk allocation default — Changed the default file allocation method to trunc. Proxy controls — Improved proxy button styling in network preferences. Download: Motrix Next 64-bit | ARM64 | macOS ~20.0 MB (Open Source) Links: Website | macOS / Linux | Screenshot Get alerted to all of our Software updates on Twitter at @NeowinSoftware
    • NVIDIA officially supports Ubuntu, as linked above with the GeForce NOW Hands on I did in collaboration with Paul Hill.
    • TO be clear I am not running linux today, however I keep thinking about it. And I want to make sure there are minimal obstacles if I decide to make that switch in the coming months.
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